We’re excited to announce our latest investment in Humble, a new “circular economy” reselling marketplace for second-hand goods, e-commerce returns, and excess inventory.

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Humble started in 2020 as a c2c (consumer to consumer) community platform to enable sustainability-minded individuals to donate their unneeded items: enabling others to gain value from an item instead of simply throwing it away. Humble quickly built an active social media following as recycling and sustainability awareness continued to grow in the Philippines. As word started to spread, businesses began to reach out looking for help clearing out their stocks of unsold or returned items, and the scale of the potential opportunity for Humble multiplied, both financially and from a sustainability perspective.

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Today, while still supporting the c2c community, Humble has now launched a platform for liquidating excess stocks and returned items for businesses in the Philippines. This is a surprisingly big opportunity. In the e-commerce market, roughly 20% of all purchases are ultimately returned by the customer. In the US alone, this represents an estimated $700bn in GMV of returned items (GMV = Gross Merchandise Value. This video provides an interesting glimpse into the industry in the US.) In the Philippines, the percentages of returned items are likely even higher as the widespread “cash on delivery” style of e-commerce means that typically around ~5% of orders that go out for delivery are never accepted by the customer and need to return to the warehouse. After being handled by multiple delivery teams, jostled around the back of a truck or motorcycle in 100 degree weather and monsoon rains, and potentially opened and repacked by a customer, these items return to the warehouse in a wide range of conditions, which often impacts the merchants ability to resell the item for full price.

Humble is already up and running in this space with millions of pesos worth of goods handled. Humble already has early partnerships with some of the largest ecommerce companies in the Philippines and active discussions with many more. Humble’s marketplace matches up logistics and b2c companies on the supply side with specialist refurbishing and reselling businesses on the demand side. They also have their own ecommerce store called Thrift where they sell directly. Humble’s innovative approach means they don’t take “inventory risk” - they handle the goods on a consignment basis with a revenue share agreement with their clients. In many cases, the items being handled are already mostly or fully “written off” so any resale value is considered a win for the client.

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In addition to the e-commerce market, Humble can help any type of business that has excess inventory - with particularly large additional opportunities in the electronics, home & living, and fashion industries.

The co-founders of Humble are Niña Opida and Josef Werker, a proven business operator in the Philippines who was previously the long-time Managing Director of Penbrothers, one of the most successful HR services companies in the Philippines that provides various business services for some of the largest tech unicorns in the US. Josef and his team are passionate about the circular economy ecosystem and have built a very strong foundation and gameplan for Humble. We are excited to support them in this mission.

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If your business has lots of excess items and you are interested in both recovering significant financial value and improving your company’s ESG performance, Humble is a great solution. You can learn more on their website here.

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